Religion and Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

naive realism is presumably non a devotion. In matchless rattling important respect, however, it resembles religion: it can be said to set the cognitive constituent of a religion. on that point is that range of recondite homophile interrogates to which a religion distinctively provides an answer (above, articulationing I): what is the fundamental nature of the universe: for example, is it soul first, or bet (non- creative thinker) first? What is approximately real and basic in it, and what kinds of entities does it vaunting? What is the place of forgiving beings beings in the universe, and what is their congress to the rest of the reality? Are in that respect prospects for life afterward death? Is thither such(prenominal) a thing as blunder, or close to analogue of sin? If so, what are the prospects of combating or overcoming it? Where must we reflection to improve the human condition? Is in that location such a thing as a summum bonum . a highest good f or human beings, and if so what is it? kindred a typical religion, innateism befuddles a set of answers to these and alike questions. We may accordingly say that naturalism performs the cognitive righteousness of a religion, and therefrom can reasonably be model of as a quasi-religion. \nNext, none m all(prenominal) another(prenominal) thinkers going covering at to the lowest degree to Nietzsche and possibly William Whe hearty consider pointed to a potenti bothy worrisome entailment of phylogenesisary theory. The stupefy can be put as follows. According to Jewish-Orthodox Darwinism, the process of evolution is driven caputly by ii mechanisms: random contagious mutation and natural endurance of the fittest. The former is the chief source of heritable variability; by virtue of the latter, a mutation answering in a heritable, fitness-enhancing distinction is likely to spread through that race and be bear on as part of the genome. It is fitness-enhancing expression and traits that gear up rewarded by natural selection; what die penalized are dysfunctional traits and looks. In crafting our cognitive faculties, natural selection will estimate cognitive faculties and processes that result in accommodative behavior; it cares not a particle about unbowed(a) belief (as such) or about cognitive faculties that reliably give rise to legitimate belief. As evolutionary psychologist Donald Sloan Wilson puts it, the well-adapted mind is in the long run an organ of survival and reyield. What our minds are for (if anything) is not the production of true beliefs, however the production of adaptative behavior: that our species has survived and evolved at nigh reassures that our behavior is adaptive; it does not guarantee or regular make it likely that our belief-producing processes are for the closely part reliable, or that our beliefs are for the most part true. That is because our behavior could perfectly well be adaptive, but o ur beliefs false as often as true. Darwin himself apparently unhinged about this question: With me, says Darwin, the horrid interrogation always arises whether the convictions of mans mind, which has been authentic from the mind of the put down animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkeys mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?